Friday, July 04, 2014

The events of recent years have seen the post-mortem reputation of Enoch Powell rise considerably. One tends to expect that Nicholas Ridley's reputation will rise over time in the eyes of the English people as well:

In the first week of July 1990, I had gone to his Oxfordshire home to conduct an interview for The Spectator, which I then edited. At some point I asked him, in quite a desultory fashion, about the drive towards European Monetary Union.

It was a light-the-blue-touch-paper moment — emphasised by the way the chain-smoking Ridley dragged hard on his cigarette between making his explosive points: ‘This is all a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe.

‘It has to be thwarted. This rushed takeover by the Germans on the worst possible basis, with the French behaving like poodles to the Germans, is absolutely intolerable . . . I’m not against giving up sovereignty in principle, but not to this lot. You might just as well give it up to Adolf Hitler, frankly.’

Startled, I interjected that the then German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was surely preferable to Hitler — he wouldn’t be dropping bombs on us, after all.

If anything, this made Ridley even more vehement: ‘I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather have the shelters and the chance to fight back, than simply being taken over by economics. He’ll soon be coming here and trying to say that this is what we should do on the banking side and this is what our taxes should be. I mean, he’ll soon be trying to take over everything . . . You don’t understand the British people if you don’t understand this point about them. They can be dared. They can be moved. But being bossed by a German — it would cause absolute mayhem in this country, and rightly, I think.’

In the uproar that ensued following the publication of the interview, Margaret Thatcher immediately demanded Ridley’s resignation. Three months later, she gave the go-ahead for the pound to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), then seen as the precursor to membership of full European Monetary Union.

That made me feel less bad about Ridley losing his job over my interview with him, since I imagine he would have detested the idea of being part of a government that had joined the ERM. And when German refusal to countenance sterling devaluation within the ERM led to Britain’s humiliating exit on September 16, 1992 (Black Wednesday), he would probably have felt vindicated.

Ridley was correct about the general direction and nature of the EU, even if he was not necessarily correct on every detail. That being said, I do not understand why Ridley, or any national leader, would not vehemently oppose giving up sovereignty on principle. Everything else springs from single key aspect.

The conquest and integration of the various peoples of Europe into an empire governed by a central imperial government has long been a dream of tyrants. But the EU is learning, as Charlemagne's heirs, Napoleon, and Hitler learned before them, that while the conquest is not terribly difficult, the integration is impossible.

To date, the EU has been more Napoleon than Hitler; it has established its own version of the Continental System. And, like the Continental System, it is doomed by virtue of its structural opposition to the laws of economics.

36 Comments:

Vox there is such a thing as being right for the wrong reasons.voluntary association with the old roman empire is taken at point value in that classic monty python script what have the romans ever done for us?:but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order...

the details float or sink a ship. It's a detailed survey that counts. Commonwealth can work. See the bible's only reference to it. State, nation and sovereignty are all fuzzy topics, notoriously difficult and Wittgenstein would be satisfied that 90 percent of the discourse on these pages are futile attempts at ever better definitions for necessarily morphic 'fuzzy' concepts.Europe's only problem is the rejection of Jesus.Science's only problem is the rejection of Jesus.Economics only problem is the rejection of Jesus.

The West/ Europe only exist in the geopolitical identity politics of right now because of Christian history.And the world only exists because of the fiat motivation of Jesus - word of God. It will dawn on you in several fractions of a second, what i just said. Ps. the borg, Daleks, etc. resistance is futile. In the end, everyone is going to agree with Who God is. It's either high road or low road. Every day is a fork in time.

Semi related Vox but have you been paying attention to Australian politics? Tony Abbott has the navy sending illegal immigrants back home before they reach our shores and ignoring the UN. He is also watering down the racial discrimination act. The only thing sweeter than Abbott actually standing up for Australia is that the mass media is going nuts.

Moronic to go on about "Germany." In political and psychological terms, BRD has been nothing more than a whipped lap dog of the American Empire since 1945. See what Jewish paleocon Paul Gottfried has written about this.

Italy was kicked out together with Uk from the ERM in 1992. Some people with good memory still blame Germany for that.Unfortunately we are historically more prone to being bossed by Germany, the majority of people do not agree but nothing serious is being done against it.

And, if you understand how these people think, you understand what is coming next.

Take George Bush the Lesser as an example. An unpopular president becomes suddenly vastly more popular when the nation is attacked (apparently*) from outside. Even while still unpopular in many quarters, the voices of criticism fall notably silent for as long as the subsequent conflict appears successful. Even then, it is a long time before the initial conflict itself becomes a matter of criticism; typically only the handling of it is criticised, until years or decades later (if ever: FDR seems largely immune, even to allegedly right wing critics).

The flying of flags, wearing of flag pins, and general symbolic idiocies, remain widespread.

Always, the war itself is pretext for power and resource grabs by the government and its cronies.

Yes, the EU project is in obvious difficulty today.

This would lead the observant to expect it to be attacked, (apparently) from outside, in some dramatic, eye-catching, yet fundamentally insignificant, manner.

9/11 being the obvious model.

I don't think the ultimate result will be any different, but I do think it is too early to start celebrating victory when most people haven't even figured out we're being invaded, even fewer recognise who the real enemies are, and almost nobody is actually fighting back.

There is a lot more blood to flow under the bridge before this particular empire is done.

Germany is about as German as the Soviet Union was Russian, or not at all. The EU is just an Iron Curtain for Western Europe, with Non-White Biological Weapons instead of Soviet Tanks to curtail the freedom of the people.Some would call it Hitler's Revenge. You didn't really believe the War would end with the destruction of Germany did you? Paranoid Schizophrenics have no sense of proportion. A War against the NSDAP is now a War against White people...

Man keeps trying to build the Tower of Babel and keeps failing for the same reason.

Not any more:

What is also upsetting Muslim fundamentalists worldwide is the Las Vegas looking structures that were built overlooking the Ka’ba known as The Seven Towers, built by the Bin Laden Group on top of what is known as Mount Babel.

Al-Sharq Al-Awasat had this to say about the massive project that was completed in Mecca:

“The project Towers Of The House is the first project in Mecca … which carry seven towers … “Towers Of The House” is on the area of Mount Babel in Ajyad. The site overlooks directly on the Haram al-Sharif (Holy House [Ka’ba]).”

“is also the largest tower in the world in terms of area. Contractor Bin Laden Group, Saudi Arabia … Classified as the largest building urban in terms of the total area on the face of the globe, where excess space land for the project 1.4 million square meters and consists of 7 towers”.

Putin is certainly making a go at it... with Eastern and Central Europe addicted to Russian gas for over a third of their economies. Even France which is more energy self-sufficent than others (thanks be to nuclear power) doesnt' want to screw up a billion euro deal to sell Russia two Amphibs (useful for projecting power along the Baltic coast perhaps?) despite American pressure to cut off relations.

It is one thing for us to enrich China that they may become a regional if not hemispheric power halfway around the world, but Europe is enriching Putin along their own frontier and they don't seem to have a choice (OK Germany could reopen coal mines and expand their reliance on nuclear power but they have convinced themselves that both are dangerous because global warming and Fukushima (despite an incredibly good nuclear safety record))

Wow, allowing political correctness in Europe to force you into the arms of the most politically incorrect leader on the continent!

This is the most fascinating period I have witnessed since the fall of the USSR. Iraq, Afghanistan, and GWOT was a minor freakshow on the way to the current European crisis. (China's expansionist efforts are pretty fund to watch too.)

Of course Obama's confidence and charm (attested to by Alfred Nobel) have done wonders for the US profile abroad. Has a Nobel Prize ever been revoked? Or are the Norwegians still as stupid as the US minority who still think Obama is a great leader?

Germany plans to halt shale-gas drilling for the next seven years over concerns that exploration techniques could pollute groundwater. "There won't be [shale gas] fracking in Germany for the foreseeable future," German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks (SPD) said Friday in Berlin. The government's planned regulations come amid a political standoff with Russia, Germany's main gas supplier, and following intensive lobbying from environmentalists and brewers concerned about possible drinking water contamination.

It is simple. For most people trading freedom for security is an easy choice, almost a no-brainer. The fact that it is only the illusion of security troubles them not, because the salesmen are always smart, smooth-talking people, who care so very much. Anyone who points out the problems before they become glaringly obvious in point of fact is dismissed as paranoid, argumentative, cold-hearted. why do people stay with abusers? They like the sweet nothings more than they fear the pain.

The sort of comments folks like fnn, jayb and Red Skull make are interesting in that they reject the notion of nationalism and nationalistic tendencies, whereas Nicholas Ridley was quite certain of them.

There are transnationalist groups that attempt, and occasionally succeed for a while, in co-opting governments, but the people still remain. And ultimately the people are responsible for their government.

I find the comments from fnn, jayb and Red Skull oddly reminiscent of gamma-addled MRA types who complain society is rigged against them. It's willful abdication of responsibility, and of hope.